Stories Category: Intensive Care
Preadmission Oral Corticosteroids Are Associated With Reduced Risk of ARDS in Critically Ill Adults With Sepsis
The unadjusted occurrence rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome within 96 hours of ICU admission was 35% among patients who had received oral corticosteroids compared with 42% among those who had not (p = 0.107). In... read more
Vasopressors: Future Research
Margaret Parker, MD, MCCM, speaks with Lakhmir S. Chawla, MD, about future research related to the Congress session "Bench-Pressing in the ICU: Which Vasopressor Agent Should I Choose for My Patient?" which he presented... read more
The Emotional Toll of Treating Victims of Violence
Hospital leaders are implementing several techniques to address the lasting trauma of disaster emergencies. Hospital disaster drills often focus on transporting patients to the emergency department and moving them into the... read more
Mechanical Thrombectomy for Acute Ischemic Stroke
Coutinho et al have performed a timely post hoc analysis consisting of a patient population from 2 large, prospective, core laboratory–adjudicated trials: Solitaire With the Intention for Thrombectomy (SWIFT) and Solitaire... read more
Funding for NIH Would Be Cut 18% Under Budget
Funding for the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier medical research funding agency, would be cut by 18%, or $5.8 billion, from levels enacted for fiscal 2017, under the Trump administration budget.... read more
The Toll of Death and Disability From Traumatic Injury in the United States
This viewpoint describes the lack of funding for trauma research as a possible cause of increasing mortality rates from traumatic injury. In a seminal 1966 report, the National Research Council (NRC) declared that unintentional... read more
Decision Making Model Enables Resolution of Ethics Issues at the Bedside
A study from Switzerland that evaluated implementation of a stepped ethical decision-making model on three intensive care units (ICUs) and two geriatric wards found that it worked well, with staff able to find the time and... read more
Ratio-based Transfusion and Non-trauma Patients
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) urge caution in adopting ratio-based transfusion - a practice previously studied only in patients with severe traumatic injuries - in non-trauma patients. Their study published... read more
Visual Abstracts, A New Strategy for Creating Journal Articles
You might be interested in this initiative arising out of surgery, and primarily developed by Andrew M. Ibrahim MD, MSc of the University of Michigan. Dr. Ibrahim is a Clinical Lecturer in Surgery here and a Robert Wood Johnson... read more
Ultra-Short-Course Antibiotics for Patients With Suspected Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia but Minimal and Stable Ventilator Settings
Many patients started on antibiotics for possible ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) do not have pneumonia. Patients with minimal and stable ventilator settings may be suitable candidates for early antibiotic discontinuation.... read more
Presentations of adult septic patients in the prehospital setting as recorded by emergency medical services
The most common keywords related to septic patients’ symptom presentation were: abnormal/ suspected abnormal temperature (64.1.%), pain (38.4%), acute altered mental status (38.2%), weakness of the legs (35.1%), breathing... read more
Being New in the ICU
Being new in the ICU is not easy. You need to have the passion for critical care so much that you really don’t care how difficult it is. That passion is what gets you through the newbie stress. I was a new grad in the ICU,... read more
Recovery after Acute Kidney Injury
Little is known about how acute kidney injury (AKI) resolves, and whether patterns of reversal of renal dysfunction differ among patients with respect to ultimate recovery. We have identified five distinct recovery phenotypes... read more
The Gut Microbiome and Its Role in Cardiovascular Diseases
The trimethylamine/TMAO pathway likely represents only one of many microbe-dependent pathways that will ultimately be linked to cardiovascular disease pathogenesis, and proven to be an important diagnostic and therapeutic... read more
An Educational Intervention Optimizes the Use of Arterial Blood Gas Determinations Across ICUs
The large scale implementation of guidelines for ABG use reduced the number of inappropriately ordered ABG determinations over seven different multidisciplinary ICUs, without negatively impacting patient care. We saw a reduction... read more
Meta-Analysis of Therapeutic Hypothermia for Traumatic Brain Injury in Adult and Pediatric Patients
Therapeutic hypothermia is a likely beneficial treatment following TBI in adults, improving both neurologic outcomes and decreasing mortality rates. Our work suggests that the optimal management strategy to improve both morbidity... read more
Never Stop Caring
I read with interest the piece by Wilson et al regarding their examination of end-of-life care patterns in hospitalized patients on their vascular surgery practice in Oregon. I applaud the authors for examining their practices... read more
